"Milwaukee - 40 Years Later"

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The Rev. Suzelle Lynch
September 16, 2007

The year was 1967. In Milwaukee, 90,000 African Americans, about 12 percent of the city’s total population, were crowded into the city’s “inner core” – living on 5.5 percent of the city’s total land area. According to Frank Aukofer, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal newspaper, (in his 1968 book, “City With a Chance,”) “To anyone who was simply passing through, … (Milwaukee’s inner core) did not look as slummy as (similar areas) in some other cities. (Yet) People lived in rundown homes with rats and roaches, plumbing that did not work, heating systems that conked out on cold days, broken windows that went unrepaired – all typical of slum housing anywhere.” (Aukofer p. 36) At the time, as well as some who lived in a few neighborhoods on the fringe outside the inner core, there were only 66 black families living in the 25 suburbs and villages around the city. Milwaukee then, as it is now, was one of the most segregated cities in the country. (Aukofer)

Why was this so? Today, the concept of open housing can be difficult to understand because it involves an assumption so basic that it nearly goes without saying – that no one, anywhere, can be denied housing on the basis of race, religion, or ethnicity. But in 1955 a study titled “The Housing of Negroes in Milwaukee” elegantly concluded, “The free choice of residence in the open housing market which ecologically stratifies most of our population in terms of income, education, and occupation, is not operative in the case of Negroes. All those restricted within the arbitrary confines of the racial ghetto must find shelter as best they can within its circumscribed bounds. …” http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/tp&CISOPTR=15164 In other words, most African Americans lived in the inner core because, due to “restrictive local covenants” – laws or ordinances that forbade the selling or renting of property to anyone who wasn’t white – combined with simple prejudice on the part of property owners, they were not allowed to live anywhere else.

Open housing was far from the only civil rights issue of the day. Milwaukee activists, led by the NAACP, and leaders like attorney Lloyd Barbee, had been hard at work on issues of school segregation, employment discrimination, access to public services, the ethical issue of public officials belonging to whites-only clubs, and others. There were rallies, marches, pickets, boycotts and sit-in demonstrations – and lawsuits as well.

But the 1967 marches in Milwaukee held to draw attention to the open housing issue were legendary. The 40th anniversary of the marches will be honored in Milwaukee later this month as a way to not only acknowledge and celebrate past efforts to win equal rights for all, but to re-ignite discussions and refocus attention to problems of social inequity that are still unresolved. My desire, in talking together today about the marches, is to get as many of us as possible interested in attending some of the 40th anniversary events, and learning more about how we, with our deeply-held values of justice, equity and compassion; and respect for the inherent worth and dignity of all persons, might help address those still-present social inequities.

During the summer of 1967, Milwaukee’s housing problems were made worse when an area on the west side of the inner core was scheduled for demolition. This area – dubbed Kilbourntown 3 – was the most neglected in the city. Many houses stood vacant, with broken windows and gutted interiors. It was going to be torn down to make way for an urban renewal project, and property owners were loath to make repairs on homes that would be reduced to rubble before long. Unfortunately, the urban renewal projects themselves, designed to rehabilitate housing or build better housing, were mostly still in the planning stages. One that had been completed produced nearly 600 new apartments, but the people in the area could not afford the rent on those apartments! (Aukofer 36-37) In 1967 there was a very real fear on the part of neighborhood residents that they would be turned from their homes by the demolition, and would have no place to go.

Two years earlier, the Wisconsin legislature had passed a state open housing law, but it was weak. It applied primarily to the sale and rental of housing as a business. Not covered were single family homes and duplexes of four or fewer units in which the owner lived, owner-occupied rooming houses with four or fewer roomers, and extra homes or cottages on small Milwaukee lots. In other words, only about a third of the housing in Milwaukee was required to be offered fairly under the new law – and enforcement was lax. Alderman Vel Phillips, the only woman and the only African American on the Milwaukee Common Council introduced had repeatedly introduced open housing ordinances beginning in 1962, but her proposals were soundly voted down by her fellow Aldermen. (Aukofer 105)

Into this situation walked Father James Groppi, a Catholic priest who served as advisor to the NAACP’s Youth Council. Father Groppi had been born in Milwaukee, one of twelve children of Italian immigrants. He began his duties as a priest at St. Veronica Church on the south side of Milwaukee in 1959, and was transferred four years later to St. Boniface Church, a predominately black parish in the inner city. It was there that he began working forcefully and diligently for civil and human rights.

Father Groppi and his Youth Council members had been active in all the civil rights protests in Milwaukee – picketing public officials, participating in school boycotts to protest de facto segregation, sitting in at the mayor’s office and the City Hall – and thus they engaged the open housing issue with determination and energy. They decided that the best way to draw attention to the issues was to stage a symbolic march from the north side of the city to the south side. The south side was mostly white. It was an area with a high percentage of homeowners, and the people who lived there worked hard for their moderate earnings, and lived frugally. Though the area was ethnically mixed, about a third of the residents were of Polish descent. It was an area that did not welcome the civil rights movement in general, and in particular, was not happy with Father Groppi – who was perceived as stirring things up and causing problems. The march was symbolic in that the marchers would cross the Menomonee River Valley, which physically separated the north and south sides of the city. They would “bridge” the divide between north and south via the 16th Street viaduct – an idea that would inspire a South Side joke one of our members shared with me – the joke that goes:

Question: “What's the longest bridge in the world?”
Answer: “The 16th Street Viaduct - it goes from Africa to Poland!”

On the evening of August 28th the Youth Council gathered their supporters at the north end of the viaduct, and began to march across – heading for Kosciuszko Park in the heart of the south side, where they would gather and rest before marching back.

As the 200 marchers headed out, they weren’t expecting trouble. Only eight police officers were on hand to accompany them. And during most of the march, despite taunts by spectators, things were fairly orderly. What Father Groppi and the Youth Council had not anticipated, though, was that there would be five thousand white people gathered on sidewalks and street corners in an area of several blocks around Kosciuszko Park – gathered and waiting for the marchers to appear.

As the marchers gathered in a grassy area of the park cordoned off by police, the crowd of spectators booed and jeered. Some held up a Confederate flag. Marchers yelled back. Father Groppi climbed up on a picnic table to try to address his group, but was shouted down by a park employee, who told him he didn’t have a permit to make a speech. Groppi said that he’d comply with the conditions of the permit if police would clear spectators out of the youth council’s picnic area. “When you enforce the law on them,” he said, “you can enforce it on us.”

When the marchers tried to return to the viaduct, the white mob blocked their way. Bottles and stones flew out of the crowds. Police reinforcements arrived, and escorted the marchers out of the park. The crowd thinned out, but about 600 white youths dogged the marchers, shouting obscenities and chanting, “We want slaves,” and “Get yourself a nigger,” and Eeiyi, eeiyi, eeiyi, o, Father Groppi’s got to go…” Father Groppi said that the marchers would be back the following evening.

That night, Milwaukee Mayor Henry Maier issued the call for a voluntary curfew, urging citizens to boycott the march, and calling Groppi’s cause unworthy.

But the following evening, the mobs were again present to harass the marchers, who were accompanied, this time, by a much stronger police presence. At the south end of the viaduct, at a used car lot, a grotesque effigy of Father Groppi, painted with swastikas, swung by its neck on a rope. A few blocks west of the park, the marchers were attacked by the crowd, and the police moved in efficiently to protect them. They urged the marchers to turn back, but Father Groppi was adamant, and they continued on to the park. But they could not stay there long before returning to the viaduct. Later that evening, the Freedom House, the Youth Council’s headquarters, was burned down, and Mayor Maier banned all night marches and demonstrations – a ban that lasted only three days.

Some of our members remember those marches well. Some even marched with Father Groppi and the Youth Council. One person, who grew up on the south side, told me that she went down to the route of the march with a friend who also lived in that south side neighborhood, not because she wanted to support one side or the other of the issue, but simply because she was curious.

Another member who was a child at the time remembers being ordered into the basement by her father during the marches. She said, “We could hear the shouting of the marchers and the sirens of the police squads because we lived only three blocks from the route the marchers walked.” She and her brother and sister gathered blankets, pillows, toys, books, and food, and then went downstairs. “It felt like we were going into a bomb shelter (just as we had drilled during elementary school in the early 60s).” She said that it was frightening to see her father so panic-stricken, and that she could not understand why the marchers were so angry.

The Youth Council and their supporters continued to protest, and many different groups and organizations joined their cause, including many churches. Marches or demonstrations for the cause of open housing were held for 200 consecutive nights – even after the Milwaukee Common Council passed a weak open housing ordinance in December of 1967, which Groppi dismissed as “tokenism and crumbs.” Milwaukee finally passed a strong open housing law in April on 1968, following the passage of a Federal law that was put in place almost immediately after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the midst of the marches, Father Groppi spoke here in our church on September 19th, 1967. His appearance was sponsored by the West Suburban Human Relations Council, which was made up of residents from Wauwatosa, Brookfield and Elm Grove. One of our members was chair of the council at the time, and he said that no other suburban church was willing to host the meeting.

Groppi was accompanied by four of the NAACP’s elite Youth Council Commandos – young men trained to protect the civil rights demonstrators and do whatever was needed for the cause. Thanks to the careful preservation of our church historians, including, most recently, Lilo Sewell, we have a good record of the newspaper articles and photographs covering his visit in one of our history scrapbook, which is available for you to see on a table in the Community Room.

Imagine 700 people crammed into our building – and by building, I mean our foyer and Community Room, mostly, for this sanctuary addition had not yet been built. It was an overflow crowd for sure – including many who listened to Groppi’s speech over loud speakers in the parking lot. “We will die in the streets before we let the mayor take away our God-given rights to protest, to picket, to march, to speak freely,” Groppi said, according to an article by Joe Cannizzo in the Waukesha Freeman (found in the UUCW scrapbook) He told the crowd that those rights, along with fair housing ordinances were the reasons for the many night demonstrations in Milwaukee. “The inner core of Milwaukee has four times the population density of any area of the city,” Groppi stated. He told the crowd that the Kilbourn Town project would uproot 1000 people, “And where will they go?” he asked. When those 1000 people were evacuated, they would not be able to move outside the inner core because no one there would “rent to a Negro.”

Groppi also told the gathering the story of a Milwaukee woman who refused to rent to a Negro couple. “We picketed her house during the Advent season,” he said. “The youth council sang Christmas carols to her. This woman would go to church on Christmas and finger her rosary beads and cry when she heard the story of Mary and Joseph being refused room at the inn. Just a few days before she had done the same thing – refused room in her house.”

Father Groppi encouraged his suburban listeners to take leadership, and to urge their city and village councils pass open housing ordinances. Some of our church’s members had been doing so. One told me that she knew of a Catholic woman in her village who was going door to door with a petition asking for support for fair housing from the village board. So she joined in the effort. “Most of the reactions I got resulted in having to push myself up the walks to those doors,” she said. “One Sunday, after starting out and getting a finger jabbed into my chest with accompanying remarks, I retreated to St. Ben's Church, where I knew Father Groppi hung out,” she said.  “There I felt surrounded by support from him (and his commandos) and all those present, and sad that I felt better there than in my own community.”

Christopher Raible, who was our congregation’s first minister, said in a 1967 sermon that Father Groppi and his church were a unique bridge between Milwaukee’s black and white communities, a bridge which might allow the two communities to communicate and foster togetherness, and bring change about peacefully.

No doubt there has been a great deal of change since the 1960s in our metropolitan area, and yet, much remains to be addressed. All you have to do is take North Avenue from west to east to see that poverty, substandard housing, and unemployment are still rampant. I spent several weeks this summer driving my child back and forth to arts-oriented day camps on Milwaukee’s east side – and we had many conversations to answer her questions about why the neighborhoods we were passing through looked so run down and depressed.

There’s factual evidence as well – in 2000, the US Census Bureau submitted a report on housing segregation of African Americans in major cities across the United States (based on the criteria of dissimilarity, isolation, exposure, centralization, and spatial proximity) that named Milwaukee as our nation’s most segregated metropolitan area.

And four years earlier, a study of mortgage lending and segregation in the Milwaukee suburbs prepared for The Fair Lending Coalition by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sociology professor Gregory D. Squires found that there was still considerable discrimination in the availability of loans to African American and Latino home buyers, especially when they sought to purchase suburban properties. The study concluded with this paragraph, “Hypersegregation in Milwaukee has not been resolved or even significantly reduced in recent years. The destructive impact of segregated housing is felt in a variety of social and economic arenas including education, employment, and the legacy of intense racial conflict among Milwaukee residents. But this malignant condition whereby African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latinos are separated in everyday residential life from their white counterparts and deprived of the most basic choices related to establishing a home and community base will not be cured without serious and sustained attention by all levels of government, private industry, and community organizations.”

As a church, we are the kind of community organization that can help bring attention to these continuing issues in our community. Attending the events to honor the 40th anniversary of the open housing marches is one place to start, and there is a flyer on the same table in the Community Room that holds our history scrapbook that will tell you about those events. Via the efforts of our Social Action Committee, UUCW has been a public supporter of the Housing Trust Fund in Milwaukee, a project begun by the Interfaith Council of Greater Milwaukee to make funding available to improve housing – which still needs our help and support.

We also have the opportunity to support community organizing efforts that span the city and suburban divide, to join in work that will address issues like fair housing and health insurance that are of common concern to all metro Milwaukee residents. Last year I took part in a new program in Milwaukee called the Mosaic Partnerships, which paired leaders across lines of race and ethnicity in an attempt to begin to build the kind of social capital that can be used to address larger community issues. That kind of program is another way to get involved.

Whether you live in the city of Milwaukee or in the suburbs, we live in a good place. It calls out for our attention, our involvement, our care. Some of us have memories of those days in the 60s when open housing was openly on the agenda; some of us have ideas about what we think can happen today to ensure equality of housing and opportunities. We all are, I believe, called to build the bridge, to work regionally, to work together across lines of race, class, creed, color, sexual orientation and gender identity, across lines of age and ability as well. How we do so, whether we do so, only the future can tell.

Amen.

Major resources consulted:

• Frank Aukofer’s,1968 book, “City With a Chance.”
• Bay View Compass article, August 2007, “Father Groppi,” by Michael Timm
• Wisconsin History Magazine, Summer 2007, “March on Milwaukee,” by Margaret Rozga
• Time Magazine article (found on the internet) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,837329,00.html

Special thanks to Becky Steffes, who helped me locate the resources I needed.